Category: Issue 344
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EPA Publishes Action Plan to Address BPA Concerns
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently published an action plan to address concerns over bisphenol A (BPA), which has purportedly “caused reproductive and developmental effects in animal studies and may also affect the endocrine system.” Intended to strengthen the agency’s chemical management program, the plan focuses on the plasticizer’s environmental impact and proposes (i) adding BPA…
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Science and Technology Advisors Assess Federal Nanotechnology Initiative
The President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology has released a report to the president and Congress assessing the National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI), “which coordinates Federal research and development activities involving the manipulation of matter at scales smaller than 100 billionths of [a] meter.” The third in a decade-long series of assessments, the report…
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Study Compares Overeating to Drug Addiction
A recent study has reportedly likened overeating to a drug addiction, concluding that rats given access to high-fat food exhibited a neurochemical dependency similar to the “reward homeostasis induced by cocaine or heroin.” Paul Johnson and Paul Kenny, “Dopamine D2 Receptors in Addiction-Like Reward Dysfunction and Compulsive Eating in Obese Rats,” Nature Neuroscience, March 28,…